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Faced by the difficulty of placing these powers, you must in
reason allocate to the secondaries what you count august:
secondaries must not be foisted upon the First, or tertiaries
upon the secondaries. Secondaries are to be ranged under the
First, tertiaries under the secondaries: this is giving
everything its place, the later dependent on their priors, those
priors free.
This is included in that true saying "About the King of All, all
has being and in view of Him all is": we are to understand from
the attribution of all things to Him, and from, the words "in
view of Him" that He is their cause and they reach to Him as to
something differing from them all and containing nothing that
they contain: for certainly His very nature requires that nothing
of the later be in Him.
Thus, Intellectual-Principle, finding place in the universe,
cannot have place in Him. Where we read that He is the cause of
all beauty we are clearly to understand that beauty depends upon
the Forms, He being set above all that is beautiful here. The
Forms are in that passage secondaries, their sequels being
attached to them as dependent thirds: it is clear thus that by
"the products of the thirds" is meant this world, dependent upon
soul.
Soul dependent upon Intellectual-Principle and
Intellectual-Principle upon the Good, all is linked to the
Supreme by intermediaries, some close, some nearing those of the
closer attachment, while the order of sense stands remotest,
dependent upon soul.
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